Blue Screen Mayhem!
by Aravell
Summary: AU: Even the sardonic, acerbic, stoic top student Anna Kyoyama may went off as a damsel in distress over a laptop that went blue screen, before she was saved by her knight in shining armo—uh, I mean tarnished headphones.


**Disclaimer:** I do not own Shaman King nor any of the characters.

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Campus library was excessively loaded at the time Anna Kyoyama stepped in, much to her dismay. As her sharp eyes swept over the vast area, not missing any single corner, all tables provided were full either with students hovering over their laptops with their pens and notebooks scattered all over the table wooden surfaces, or students who were having their eyes scanning thick books in front of them, accompanied with piles of other books. At the second thought, she figured this wasn't that surprising. Finals for fall quarter were still in three weeks, but still, her college is one of the most prestigious universities in the country (which, of course, explained why she was one of the students) and full of competitive students. That would be the best excuse for why the library was so crowded.

After strolling around the tables and somehow scaring some of the students only by casting steely glances in attempt to find a table with the fewest dumb-looking kids, Anna managed to find a table with fewest students (most scooted over the other nearby tables in awkward hurry as she approached, not that she bother though), located near the back corner of the room. Just the perfect place to her.

She sat down, pulled her laptop out of her bag and placed it in front of her before turning it on. She plugged the charger in and connected the plug into the socket, just in case if the battery drained out. She then stole a glance of her wristwatch: 1.08 PM. _Two hours to kill before the next class._

 _Two hours to finish my halfway_ _presentation_ _slides that I'm obliged to present ON THE VERY SAME class._

She mentally cursed over the same name, repeatedly, for God knows had gone how many times that day.

 _Curse you, Pirika_.

There's no doubt that Anna was one of those competitive students. Nah screw it, she ranked FIRST on all of her classes. She had _always_ been one throughout her whole studies since she was a kid. If there's one thing she hated (among lots and lots of other things), that would be procrastinating. Had it not been for the bothersome texts and calls from her friend Pirika who was recently going through a devastating breakup with her boyfriend the rich boy Tao, to the point Anna swore she could almost hear Pirika's ear-splitting wailing just by skimming through her texts (which were astonishing examples of caps lock and emoji combo abuse), she would have finished the slides three days ago.

Curses aside, Anna repeatedly glanced at the clock shown on the upper right side of the screen, making sure she kept track on the time. Her fingers running rapidly on the keyboard, typing shortened sentences in bullet , she maneuvered the cursor to the picture icon under Insert menu to insert an image.

The expected usual window won't pop out.

She tapped on it again. Once. Twice. Thrice. Tapping-Kyoyama-furious-mode-ice. Her naturally well-trimmed brows dug even deeper whereas her index finger was tapping the touchpad viciously and still no result. _Tch. Greaaat._

Anna decided to give it a few minutes, waiting for a change, fingers drumming over the table edge in an impatient rhythm. Still nothing. She then attempted to move the cursor in all directions but now it remained still, stubbornly, on its initial position. "Come on, you stupid laptop," she hissed as she started attacking any keyboard keys within reach haphazardly and still not getting further result. Nothing, but a tiny text on top of the window next to the document's title made her growled under her breath, providing the information that the program was not responding.

She let out a suppressed sigh of exasperation. She should've listened to Silva, a technician working for the Patch Electronics, that her laptop had waaayy past its glorious ages and that it should've retired and that she should've bought a new one. That time Anna suspected it was only Silva's trick to promote Patch' newest-released laptops (and she was right, given Silva got all flustered when she confirmed this with him), but now oh boy who was she kidding. Well, at least it couldn't be any worse. Her laptop had gone through the same episodes for a few times and nothing seriously bad had ever happened.

At the very moment a realization hit her. Since she was too busy thinking about getting it over ASAP, she hadn't saved anything from the newly edited slides…

So if the program crashed…

Her usually sharp eyes twitched over the particular fact. _No, absolutely not NOW_. _NOT. NOW._

 _Shit shit shit CURSE YOU PIRIKA CURSE. YOU._

Just when the idea of hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del passed her mind and her fingers had positioned themselves on the proper keys, Anna stopped all of sudden. Her body getting tense. Her eyes were as wide as plates of what she saw on the screen. She blinked.

The laptop was now displaying a blue screen. Blue screen. BLUE. SCREEN. OF. DEATH.

It _could_ be any worse.

"OH. SHIT."

In normal situations, her voice level would've been categorized under normal level. Unfortunately for Anna this wasn't one of them as heads started turning around, keen looking for the voice source loud enough to disrupt their attentions inside the silent library.

She was aware of this though, but she ain't given the title Ice Queen for nothing. The infamous malicious yet subtle glance of hers she kindly distributed around the vast room. Every. Single. Corner. Without. Exception. " _What_."

Took only one word accompanied with evenly-distributed eye contact to make those heads awkwardly turned away, as fast as they could, better than _literally_ risking losing them in the hand of an extremely pissed Kyoyama.

Clicking her tongue in annoyance (and at the same time resisting clawing her nails into the eyes of those dumb-looking kids who dared to steal a split second glimpse at her), Anna focused her attention back to her laptop. She sat still in silent, brows furrowed, frowning at the blue screen, the gears of her mind ticking restlessly ten times faster than usual.

 _Hold on. If I recall correctly, I still have the unfinished slides from last night on the flash drive._ A second later she yanked her bag open, rummaging through the contents in hurry until she pulled out a USB flash drive. She stood up, ignoring the incredulous look of other students, and stormed off to the library computer lab.

And stopped dead in her tracks right in front of the lab entrance.

Full house. Full. House. Every single computer unit was occupied.

Her hand that was clutching onto the flash drive like it was her life now was hung limply on her side. _Really, now?_

She almost shrieked.

Her amber orbs eyeing her wristwatch. _34 minutes_. She returned her eyes at each student at the lab. _Tch. I bet half of them are only here for free wi-fi and doing nothing but embracing the mediocre life they have._

She let out an inaudible sigh. She wasn't here looking to cause another disruption despite how irked she was at the sight of a few students gathering around one of the computer, snickering at whatever they saw on the computer screen. No. She had no time for that.

So Anna spun on her heel and walked out (and praying the lab supervisor would give those students some good smacks behind their heads), maneuvering her way back to her table. She sat down, now ten thousand times even more pissed off than before. She considered her options: One, missing the class and do the presentation next week with the consequence of her final grade would be reduced several points. Professor Goldva had made it clear that whoever dared to miss today's class without legit explanation would be deemed as attempting to escape from the presentation assignment, thus the consequence. Obviously _not_ what she wanted.

Two, attend the class and explained the situation to Professor Goldva. Anna mentally cringed. There's no way Goldva would soften to that. What's worse, Goldva might reduce her final grade even more if the professor knew she didn't prepare the presentation as well as she should have.

Three, borrow someone's laptop. The most rational option.

But then again, as far as she swept her gaze across the room there's no one here whom she knew. She didn't have lots of friends to start with, and there's no way her current friends would have prepared for final weeks starting from today. Anna seethed in silence. _Ice Queen is a damsel in distress_ , she thought disdainfully. _Just where is my knight in shining armor when I—_

"Need help?"

She turned her head to whoever dared disrupting her train of thoughts in a quick motion, too quickly it seemed, given the evident shoulder twitch reaction from the said guy that was enough to make the tarnished orange headphones he was supporting (which was way out of time and place, at least to Anna) fell around his neck, resulting on his unruly brown hair now sticking out to every direction.

"Do I _look_ like I need help?" Anna countered back through clenched teeth, eyes squinted maliciously.

He smiled cautiously. "Well, apparently yes since I confirm it myself," he lightheartedly replied, seemingly not aware of Anna's glare toward him. He then gestured to her laptop. "The deathly blue screen, huh? Maybe I can help you."

She still gave him the same suspicioning look.

"Oh, sorry. The name's Yoh. Yoh Asakura."

Still the same look.

"I'm a Computer Science major…"

Not even an eyebrow twitch.

"Class of 2013…"

Still nothing.

"Uh, 3rd year…?"

Nope.

Yoh sighed, which to Anna looked more like a fail attempt to stifle a bemused chuckle. "Do I really look _that_ suspicious?" he asked her. He then reached over his back pockets before pulling out a wallet and slid out what looked like a student ID card, waving it slightly in front of Anna. "Here. See? I'm not lying."

Anna's eyes scrutinized the whole data on the student ID and dwelling at one part for a few seconds. An eyebrow rose slightly before her amber orbs looked back at her counterpart, still without any verbal response. Yoh, even more confused, peered over his ID card to see what caught the attention of his counterpart. Catching nothing out of the ordinary, he looked back at Anna questioningly. "What's wrong?"

Anna nodded curtly to the ID card he was holding. "Your index finger," came her dead-flat response.

Yoh looked back and he sighed again, this time for real. He moved his index finger away. "There. That's _me_ for real in the _photo_. Will you believe me now?"

Anna decided to answer the question by asking him another, "When you said 'maybe', how sure are you?"

"Uh, like in percentage or…"

"Just answer. I have no time for playing around."

He thought it for a while. "90… no, 99%. Yep, 99% actually."

Finally a physical reaction as Anna's eyes widen a bit.

He shrugged. "You can say that I'm quite proficient in repairing gadgets. At least that's what my friends say," he said. "Even if I'm not, I'm still able to help. That's my laptop over there, you can use it for whatever you were working on." Anna followed Yoh's gesture and saw a black laptop sitting on the table among piles of thick books about four or five seats away. "Well, that is if it doesn't require any specific uncommon programs, though, hence the 99%."

She looked back at him, but before she could open her mouth he spoke, "Absolutely no virus, so no worries." The smile was back. "You wouldn't expect a computer science student having a laptop full of viruses, would you?"

Anna flashed a vexed look at him, annoyed by the fact that he didn't just cut her off before she could even speak, but also rightfully pointed out her own thoughts to her face. "Fine." She stood up and taking the flash drive with her. "Besides I can hunt you down if you trick me since you have generously showed me your ID. _But_ ," she turned at him, "I'll have to use your laptop _here_ so I can still have you under _my_ watch on whatever you're doing with my laptop." She tapped the back of a chair next to her initial seat. "Are we clear?"

Another shrug. "Fine by me."

Yoh took his seat while Anna walked over his initial spot to grab the laptop before stopping midway, realizing the brand.

 _Whoa. Isn't this one of those ridiculously expensive gaming laptops?_

Anna wasn't much of a gamer herself, but she spent enough time with Pirika and her hopeless pathetic big brother Horohoro to unwillingly having to listen Horo's rambles or rants about gadgets, games, or the related topics. And there she was, once again proven right by game icons scattering all over the desktop. _Guy's apparently a rich geek. More likely a spoiled geek._

She grabbed his laptop and brought it over to the seat next to Yoh who had begun to work. She quickly plugged the drive in, antivirus scan showing nothing out of the ordinary, double-clicked the file name and began to rapidly typing whatever she still had in mind from her earlier progress. Not forgetting to hit Ctrl+S every time she finished a sentence, if necessary.

"How old is your laptop?" Yoh asked after minutes of plain silence.

Anna was already half past the work, enjoying the rhythm of the sound of keyboard keys clacking rapidly that somehow eased her ears, and she hated—no— _LOATHED_ to once again being forcefully pulled out from the comfort she was in. The fact that the deed was marvelously well done by the same person didn't help.

She looked up from the laptop screen and turned her gaze oh-so-dangerously-slowly toward the unsuspecting brunette. "Can you _not_ ," she began, emphasizing the latter word, "disturb me while I'm in the middle of work?"

"Right. Sorry," he replied goofily, scratching the back of his head. "Forget I'm asking."

Anna scoffed. She returned her attention to the slides and resumed typing. They stayed silence for a few more minutes.

"Almost 3 years," finally she spoke up.

"I wonder how it survives that long…" Yoh drawled, his eyes transfixed on the screen as his fingers typing rapidly on the keys. Anna's eyes sneaked a peak and saw he was typing bunches of alien language on what looked like command prompt. "There aren't many decent laptops left in the past few years."

"Sure, there aren't many kids with decent budgets to afford themselves those scarce decent laptops anyways," she mumbled more to herself, but apparently Yoh heard that and let out a chuckle.

"Somehow I get the feeling you're talking about me."

"Hn. I bet your parents lent you loads of money to afford this thing because you begged them."

"Hmm yes… and no."

Despite herself, Anna found herself staring back at Yoh's dark chocolate orbs, demanding explanation. _Geez, why do I even care about his eye color now?_

"They did lend me a little money… only because I told them I want to put in more hours on my part-time job to collect more money and they were afraid that'll impact badly on my studies." Yoh leaned back, massaging the space between his eyes.

Anna had to resist showing that this bit of a fact almost impressed her. "You can choose the less… _sophisticated_ type, you know."

He gave out a small laugh. "You're not a gamer, are you."

"No."

"But you know about this stuff."

"Some of my friends are gamers."

"I see." More sounds of clacking keys in the following minutes. "Anyways, no worries. Your laptop and data are safe and sound. Might take a while to restart." He showed her the monitor screen that displayed the looped circle with the word 'restarting' next to it. "Just overheated, probably due to overworking or haven't been turned off for days. It's fine for now, but just make sure the motherboard doesn't get burned."

 _Great, now he can tell exactly how I treat my laptop._ The corner of Anna's lips twitched. "Fine. Thanks."

"No problem."

Once again they drifted into their own thoughts, appreciating the comfortable silence in the room.

"By the way, you had the attention of this entire room a while ago."

Anna's fingers stopped typing that very second and she shot her most dangerous glare at him. Again, he seemed not aware of the murderous aura coming from the Ice Queen. "No offense," he continued.

"None taken, _captain obvious_."

"Again, sorry. Doesn't mean it was bad or something. In fact, I should be thanking you."

It had only been less than half an hour since they first spoke but this guy had caught Anna by surprise for three times. Well, not so obvious, courtesy for her well-kept stoic demeanor, but still, _three times_. _This is a bad sign, Anna_.

Yoh caught Anna's inquiring expression. "Well, you cast out my drowsiness, that's for sure," he smiled in amusement at the way she looked at him as if he was mentally dangerous, "but it also gave me the opportunity to talk to you—"

Anna focused back on her slides and typed the last few materials a tad faster. _This guy is dangerous. Repeat, this guy is dangerous._

"—given your well-renowned reputation on campus as, uh, The Ice Queen—"

Two times faster. _Dangerously harmful for your reputation._

"—as well as the first rank of Communication Studies' class of 2013 for _three_ years in a row—"

She typed like a madwoman. _Dangerously harmful for both your reputation AND mental health._

"And I'd like to ask, eh, you know, if you don't mind of course—"

"Done."

She plugged out the drive, stood up, grabbed her bag, and stuffed it deep inside; all done in one swift motion like a pro. Standing like a predator hovering her pray, she looked down menacingly at Yoh and did a little cheer inside her mind now that _she_ 's the one managed to catch him by surprise.

Her eyes peered at her laptop screen which was still displaying the restarting notion. She huffed, checked her wristwatch, slung her bag over her shoulder, and pointed at Yoh with her free hand. "Ok, listen carefully, Asakura," she said, making sure Yoh paying attention on every word, "I gotta go to class, so I have no choice but to entrust my laptop to you for a few hours. My class is in C311 and will be over by 6. Return it to me by then or else…" she made a threatening gesture across her neck. "Remember _, I know your ID number_."

Not giving Yoh any chance to speak, she walked past his seat, only to stop after two steps. "And…" she hesitated, "thanks again. For the help." She quickly left after that, heels clicking, dirty blonde hair swinging over her shoulders, and made her way out of the library, leaving a lone perplexed Yoh Asakura behind.

It took two blinks before the brunette regained his self. His eyes were now staring at the threshold where Anna had just stepped out. "Your welcome," he whispered solemnly, involuntarily letting the corners of his lips lifted up into a delighted smile.

He moved his attention to Anna's laptop, which had finished restarting and functioning normally just when she left, and then to his laptop that was left opened. He was actually about to ask why she was in such hurry, watching how she acted like she was running for her life. _So much for a subtle approach, idiot._ Yoh smacked his palm across his face. _Now it seems like she got the wrong impression…_

Alright, let's be honest here that it was true he meant to ask her out, but only after he had more time to get to know her.

Anyway, Yoh knew this wouldn't be his last time seeing her. He'd still got to meet her later after her class is over. Yes, this time he didn't manage to exchange mails or phone numbers with the intriguing Ice Queen, but still, it wasn't that bad.

Yoh's smile grew wider when he left the library that evening, headphones on, his favorite music blaring, as he walked down the path to building C.

 _Well, at least she knows my ID number._

* * *

 **A/N:** My very first oneshot! Woohooo *insert people cheering SFX here*

First of all, for those who previously followed/favorited/reviewed my first YohNa fic _Rivals, Friends, Fiancees_ , I've taken down the fic and I'm really, really sorry for main reason is that because after some period of writer's block I went back and reread the fic, and I. literally. cringed :/ The plot isn't well organized, and there are grammars issues, and I still can't forgive myself for making the Mankin characters so OOC. I want to start anew for writing better fics and I hope you guys understand the reason.

So, back to the oneshot. This fic is inspired by my real life experience 2 years ago where my laptop went down as I was in the process of working on college project that was due to the following week (no help from either knights in shining armor or tarnished headphones at that time, sadly). Thankfully I had the latest progress from the day before backed up in my external HDD. Moral of the story? Back up your files every second/every minute/every chance you get. Trust me.

Let me know what you think of this! Reviews and constructive criticism are much appreciated.


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